User:MCruz (WMF)/Sandbox/Newsletter/2016/3/9/Draft

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Have just a topic in mind? Suggest on the corresponding section. Thanks!

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Topic 1

• Title: Lessons learned at Learning Days at the 2016 Wikimedia Conference is now helping design new Learning Days at Wikimania 2016
• Opening text (35 words):

• For the third straight year, the Wikimedia Conference was preceded by pre-conference Learning Days for affiliates that want to improve their skills in community engagement, program design, and evaluation.

• Intro text (goes before images): The pre-conference Learning Days at Wikimedia Conference in Berlin this year was filled with several peer-to-peer community engagement sessions with four priority themes: engaging and retaining volunteers, exchanging best practices, designing Wikimedia programs and events, and measuring and evaluating impact. The lessons learned from this exercise is shaping the upcoming Learning Days at Wikimania 2016 Esino Lario
• Images (3):

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  Quotes from Wikimedia Conference 2016 Learning Days participants.
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  Wikimedia Conference participants filling out evaluation forms
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  A session on conducting surveys is going on at the conference.

• Descriptive text (250-300 words max):

The Wikimedia Conference Learning Days, held during April 21-22, were organized by the Learning & Evaluation team at the Wikimedia Foundation in collaboration with Community Engagement teams and dedicated to providing program capacity development resources and opportunities for community leaders. 51 community participants as well as various foundation staff who lent their presence and support for learning exchange, engaged with each other and learned skills through various sessions through workshops, panels and presentations to better their Wikimedia programs and projects. These two days condensed a collaborative platform for program leaders to learn from each other, harvest resources and enhance skills.

Playing the catalyst role in the Wikimedia movement with a predominantly online and diverse community individual affiliates face that help them gather a broad spectrum of lessons. Where the main conference helped for high-level discussions, the Learning Days opened up a space for granular understanding of the affiliate network, build relations for future engagements.

Lessons learned:
Program leaders were encouraged to engage in three different ways in order to have a better peer-to-peer learning: submitting a poster, presenting a lightning talk or co-hosting a workshop. Surprisingly, these Learning Days had the highest participant engagement rate thus far. 60% of the participants (31 out of 51) shared about what they liked the most from the tracks, wanted to improve in the future, and what they were planning to do in the next 30 days. Details of the learning are captured on the Meta-wiki event page.

Where do we go from here:
As they shared in the evaluation forms, the community leaders would have applied their learning skills in two different ways; bringing back processes to their local communities, and applying tools and resources to their projects. The uplcoming Learning Days at Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy will have a heterogenous mixture of some the WMCON participants, new community members and many non-affiliate community leaders who, together, will engage with each other in a two day-long intensive Learning Days. With more lessons to learn and connecting leaders for the movement, we aspire to take this to the next level.

• Further reading (links):

• Developing leadership: Learning Days at the 2016 Wikimedia Conference (3 June 2016)
• Outcomes of the Learning Days at Wikimedia Conference 2016 Berlin

Topic 2

• Title:
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Stay tuned

Blogs

• Blog 1: Why I proofread poetry at Wikisource

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  A platinum print photograph and ghost image of Philadelphia poet Florence Earle Coates.

• Descriptive text (70-80 words): Sonja Bohm worked for years to get all of Florence Earle Coates’ poetry online, and now proofreads poetry on the English Wikisource, the free library. Sonja's personal journey in unravelling the forgotten poet's works and opening up an incredible place on Wikisource for the poetry lovers. "It is the stuff of the soul; it speaks to the body, the mind, and the spirit alike", shares Sonja in the Wikimedia blog.
• Read more in the Wikimedia blog

Suggest:

• Blog 2: By writing for Wikipedia, students learn more than a “traditional test”: Luz María Silva

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  Luz Maria Silva.

• Descriptive text (70-80 words): Using Wikipedia as an educational tool for students is as critical as anything and still in an experimental phase even though the Wikipedia Education Program is actively running over 20 countries in the entire world. Academician and Wikimedian Professor Luz María Silva from Mexico has sailed against all odds for encouraging her students to write Wikipedia articles in their midterm examinations since last three years.
• Read more in the Wikimedia blog

A Program in the Spotlight

• Title: Wikipuentes: Bridges between school, digital and free culture
• Tagline: How an online campus helped the chapter take their education program to the next level.
• Images / media: (3 media files to illustrate your story)

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  Educators at the last educational hackathon in 2015 in Buenos Aires
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  WikiBrdges publication (Co-authored with educators)
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  One of the first presentation of WikiBridges in 2014

• Descriptive text: (250 - 300 words)

During the first months of this year, the staff of Wikimedia Argentina found itself working on the design and the pedagogy of creating a virtual campus where teachers and educators from different parts of the world can share their experiences in their classrooms by using Wikipedia as an instructional tool. The campus is divided in different interactive spaces. The main one refers to the massive and virtual courses, like the one we are doing now «Wikibridges: Bridges between school, digital and free culture» an innovative distance learning training about the Wikimedia projects. In this issue of the newsletter, WMAR staff reflects on the space and what it means to the program.

In this space of the virtual platform we open the discussion forums divided into groups where teachers enrolled in the MOOC. We propose activities regarding the use of Wikipedia in the classroom and Wikimedia projects in general. In turn, also we took theory lessons to accompany the exchange in discussion forums.
Another space within the campus is the one used for sharing resources, where you can find all of WMAR's publications, our documentary film and many tutorials about how to use Wikipedia in different contexts and how to become an active editor, among others. In this space we are constantly updating information in reference to the chapter in Argentina and teachers production created during the Wikibridges course.
Last but not least, the community space has been designed as a place to build community and share experiences and where all of the people involved in our online activities can share their impressions about education, technology, the digital gender gap, and anything else that they might consider interesting, in order to cooperate and collaborate on our daily work regarding the construction of free knowledge.
We believe that having on online campus has really helped us take our education program to the next level. In this virtual space we were able to both organize dates, timelines and resources, and also, have a specific place for consultations and follow up with educators that took part in the MOOC. This campus was key in making the group of participants of our MOOC into a community of educators that feels part of Wikimedia.

• Further Reading: (2 - 3 links)

• Wikipuentes MOOC 2016 report (Only in Spanish)
• Learning Pattern on the MOOC Edition 2016
• Virtual Campus (only in Spanish)
• Wikimedia Argentina Education program page on Outreach

Leave your mark on Meta

IdeaLab

• Idea 1

• Descriptive text (30-45 words): Wikimedia, as a movement has a lot to learn from the other open collaborative communities especially their committment to inclusiveness and define limits on behavior. This need has triggered an idea to adopt the "Contributor Covenant" and other likeminded organization policies to apply to the Wikimedia Project as a whole.

• File:Code of Conduct (United States Military).jpg
• Propose Wikimedia Code of Conduct (adapted from open source Contributor Covenant)

• Idea 2

• Descriptive text (30-45 words):
• Image
• Link

Learning Pattern Library

• Pattern 1

• Descriptive text (30-45 words):
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• Link

• Pattern 2

• Descriptive text (30-45 words):
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